Here's one legend's tribute to another: Ace Polish director Andrzej Wajda is in the process of wrapping up his film on former Solidarity leader and former president Lech Walesa and describes it as his most difficult project.
Titled "Walesa", the film is scheduled to release in October.
"This is the most difficult movie in my life," confessed Wajda when he started the project in December 2011.
"Walesa" is a biographical production of the Polish leader who had the courage to challenge the mighty communist system in Poland. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1983 and was president from 1990 to 1995.
Walesa had led the first independent trade union in the Soviet-dominated East European nation in August 1980. The civil disobedience movement culminated in the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and as a result, the communism thrust upon the region by the Soviet Union since 1945 came crashing down. Thus democracy and a free market-economy came into existence.
Wajda coaxed Janusz Glowcki, a famous Polish writer, to pen the script for the movie.
Glowcki candidly said that his script was not meant to be an apotheosis. Rather he wanted to show Walesa "as a man of flesh and blood, a leader of great strength, but also someone who has his weaknesses too."
Popular Polish actor Robert Wieckiewicz is playing the title role of Walesa, while actress Agnieszka Crochowska will be seen as Walesa's wife Danuta.
The cinematography is by Pawel Edelman, an Oscar-nominee for Roman Polanski's "The Pianist".
It is an irony that Walesa is on the margins of Polish politics since he lost his presidential re-election bid in 1995 and his approval ratings have not crossed even double digits since then.
Perhaps the film's release may revive Walesa's political career.
Wajda, who won a lifetime achievement Oscar in 2000, has been making movies since the mid-1950s. He started a new wave of moviemaking in Poland that was followed by Roman Polanski, Krzystof Zanussi and some others.
Wajda has been quoted as saying that the raison d'etre of his work was not to entertain the Western world but to reveal historic truths for Polish audiences.
(Surender Bhutani can be contacted at suren84in@yahoo.com)
